Nassau must sever ties with ICE, and New York should bar partnering with immigration officials, coalition says

Representatives from more than 20 Long Island community groups urged Nassau County to sever its partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday, and also asked New York lawmakers for legislation to bar state and local agencies from collaborating with federal immigration officials.

Appearing at a news conference at the Hempstead law offices of civil rights attorney Fred Brewington, one speaker said immigrants detained at the Nassau County Correctional Center faced horrid conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate heating and a lack of food and water. Many of the people detained, Newsday has reported, do not have criminal records.

"We have never seen conditions that now exist in the Nassau County jail as deplorable as they are currently," said Serena Martin, executive director of New Hour for Women and Children, which has provided services to women incarcerated on Long Island for 14 years.

The news conference was organized by Corridor Counts, a coalition of the Long Island organizations represented at the event, and by Long Island Advocates for Police Accountability, which pushes for transparency and accountability in law enforcement.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a supporter of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy, announced in February 2025 that the Nassau police department would assign 10 detectives to work with ICE under a so-called 287(g) agreement, which authorizes ICE to delegate state and local police to perform specified immigration officer functions. The county also agreed to set aside 50 jail cells for immigrants without documentation who are facing criminal charges.

Nassau officials held more than 2,600 immigrants at the Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow last year on behalf of ICE, county data obtained by Newsday shows. More than half of those held through mid-October, the most recent data available, had no criminal record.

Blakeman’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Brewington said ICE had committed "atrocities" not only in Minneapolis and Chicago, but also in Hauppauge and Hempstead.

"We are coming together to say to ICE and our administrations here in Nassau and in Suffolk County, that ICE has no place in our communities, and they need to stop the terror, because what they are doing is ripping families apart in a way that is just inhuman," he said.

"We’ve decided to come together to speak in one voice in saying, ‘ICE no more,’ " Brewington said. "ICE needs to be out."

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